LEGO 3D milling machine carves amazing 3D shapes out of foam

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We’ve seen a lot of 3D printers lately, but it that doesn’t mean milling/CNC machines don’t have their place. The latest one to get to our attention comes from Arthur Sacek from Brazil’s ZOOM Education for Life, a 13-year-old company that teams up with LEGO Education to develop innovative learning solutions. Sacek built a this wonderful device almost entirely using LEGO pieces–everything is made of LEGO except for the electric saw.

The LEGO milling machine–basically the opposite of a 3D printer–takes a bit of time to produce the finished product. As you can see in the video below, Sacek inserts a block of floral foam, the kind you see at the bottom of floral arrangements to keep everything together, and the printer goes to work, cutting away layer by layer. Since the layers of foam still sit on top of the original piece after the printer is done doing its thing, Sacek took a vacuum tube and sucked away all of the loose bits.

It took about 2 hours and 24 minutes to finish printing the product, but the result is remarkable. Compared to the original 3D image Sacek showed at the beginning of the film, the resulting 3D form is an exact replica.

Sacek said in the YouTube video’s comments that he will post a description of how the device works, and said it’s not as hard as you’d think. Sacek, a beginner programmer, used NXT. He said for it to be a real 3D printer he’d need to link the NXT to a PC using another program language. He’d also like to work on finding a new material to use, and a new algorithm.

We’ve seen LEGO pieces used before to make a pancake-making robot that moves similarly to the LEGO 3D milling machine. It’s amazing just how much you can do with those tiny, plastic blocks. Another project similar to the milling machine is the Solar Sinter which works in the same way by cutting away layers of material to form a solid object in the end. In the case of the Solar Sinter, the 3D printer used extremely hot rays of sun from the Egyptian desert to literally melt away at a container of sand, creating a glass object.

The world of automated 3D creation is endless, as is the world of LEGO creations. The two together can make a powerful team.